Implications

I imagine Jennie sitting across the fast food booth, pausing from picking at her fries while I mention the stresses of seeing multiple women. “Really should start keeping note cards,” I’d say, “Before I get their hobbies mixed up.”

I draw out the look on her face as she sees the latest picture I posted - with a woman whose shoulder melds into mine in front of a fake Christmas tree.

I see us sitting on the curb of her house, her asking about my work, what I’ve been up to, who I’ve been hanging out with. And I trace the trail of her questions past her lips, down her throat, back into her lungs, then collapse the walls by muttering a foreign name.

I fantasize because of the reality: I haven't heard from her in weeks.

So when she approaches with a text of “I hope you're doing fine,” I unwrap the gift to mean, Yes, I still matter. And only now am I prepared to reply with nothing.

8 ball

You couldn’t lean the way I’d shown you, though I guided your hips to be just so. And you didn’t quite grasp how to keep your wrist flat, but your knuckles up. Your conversation, too, was failing. Bringing up your mother who cheated you out of your paychecks. Your ex-boyfriend whose baby you miscarried the past month. I’d met you on your last week before Sacramento. It was happy hour at the bar. Why ruin what this was supposed to be?

Yet there we were, me giving cue advice you couldn’t translate.  You knocking in balls on my behalf. Saying things like, It was fucking crazy; I don’t know how I made it through; My life is a movie. Things I wish I could say and mean. Despite yourself, you kept the 8 ball alive.

After we wandered into that tattoo parlor, I joked how we should get matching 8 ball tattoos on our hips. You asked what it’d cost when I stopped you and explained how I planned for my first tattoo to be a poem - strewn across my chest - in the likeness of an equalizer. Meaningful. Original.  Thought out in advance.  But you were willing to etch the permanent reminder on a whim.  Of course you were! It would’ve gone with the woman snake charmer on your opposite thigh. You didn’t need courage, you were practiced with the needle.  I’m that way with the pen.

So how’s Sacramento?

Lolo

My grandpa’s was a language of staring.  He stared when I had something to say.  He stared when I should’ve had something to say.  He stared when there was nothing at all to say.  Being young, I took this as reason to avoid him.  But once, while my parents were out, I found him in his room, staring at a movie.  I preferred it to being alone, so I sat without permission, saw Mel Gibson driving a dune buggy on TV.  After the first explosion, I exclaimed, “Wow.”  He echoed, “Mm.”  We went on this way, in simple agreement of what was cool, who deserved to be shot, how we wanted the hero on top.  Before the movie finished, though, my parents came home.  Being young, I ran out the room to be with them.  I left my grandpa staring at the TV, whispering to the end.